The fact that Ethereum should compete with Visa or Mastercard has been discussed for some time. However, if one looks at the numbers so far, there is no way to speak of any competition. While Visa can support an average of 2,000 TPS (transaction per second), Ethereum is approaching just over 30 TPS. Can the situation change in the future?

The answer could be the hard fork Istanbul, which has been successfully completed recently. Immediately after the hard fork had been completed, several changes have been implemented, some of which should be key to Ethereum.

The biggest change could be the number of transactions per second, which according to some assumptions could grow up to 60 times. That would mean that Ethereum moves closer to matching Visa’s TPS. At least that's what the members of the startup Iden3’ think. These guys work with the Ethereum Foundation to improve the ZK-Rollup, which could significantly speed up the entire network. An improvement known as ZK (Zero-Knowledge) should help accelerate the entire Ethereum network by “relieving pressure” on the main blockchain, allowing it to operate faster and more efficiently. For this reason, ZK is also supported by Vitalik Buterin – the “father of Ethereum”. He even said that ZK is his favorite solution to one of the biggest problems of cryptocurrencies - scaling.

According to Iden3's research, ZK-Rollup should allow a much higher number of transactions to be approved in each Ethereum block. This could lead to an extreme increase in TPS. The boldest estimates speak of explosive growth of up to 6 300%, which would make Ethereum almost equal to Visa. It should be noted, however, that it is only an estimate, and whether Ethereum will really succeed in getting the projected number of TPS remains unknown.